


photograph

by onedamnangryfrog



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Pining, Pre-Slash, Texting, and a lotta bit wistful, it's a little bit ziall, written in 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29728380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedamnangryfrog/pseuds/onedamnangryfrog
Summary: Niall texts Zayn on a whim, nearly a year after he left.
Relationships: Niall Horan & Zayn Malik, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	photograph

**Author's Note:**

> I literally wrote this almost 5 years ago, when it was all very fresh. I completely forgot its existence until the other night when I was going through my google docs, and I was shocked to find that it was actually something worth posting. It didn't have an ending, so I wrapped it up pretty quickly from the point I'd left it because I'm not really in the headspace for this fandom.
> 
> Hi to anyone out there who still cares enough to be reading this!

He starts sending the messages on a whim. They haven’t really spoken since Zayn told him he was sorry for leaving, but he just couldn’t do it any longer. Niall didn’t figure that there was much more to say after that, and Zayn must have felt the same way.

But at some point when he’s traveling all over with friends, he starts taking pictures. Just silly self-portraits that show where he’s been. He doesn’t post them anywhere or send them to anyone. Until one day, he does. He sends a picture of himself with the Sydney Opera House in the background, no caption or message of any kind, to Zayn.

He almost immediately wants to take it back, snatch it back from the ether of the cloud or wherever it now lives while it’s on its way to Zayn. He knows he can’t, though, and he wants to throw away his phone instead, or stare at the screen until a response comes. 

Maybe Zayn will just ignore it. Maybe he’s changed his number and some stranger will wonder why he’s received a picture of Niall Horan in a text. Maybe he’s too busy to care what Niall is doing or where he is. The thought is accompanied by more bitterness than Niall is used to holding about anything, but he feels like bitterness is his right in this case.

When the notification alert finally goes off, he nearly drops his phone off the side of a cliff in his haste to either check what the alert was for or rid himself of the phone entirely to save himself the humiliation. He manages to regain enough composure to slide his finger across the phone to read the reply.

_You look like a proper tourist._

He waits to see if anything else is forthcoming. When nothing else materializes, he puts his phone away and tries to convince himself to chalk this up to a bad idea that could have gone worse, but nothing worth following through further on.

Until he’s lying in a hotel bed a few nights later and decides to send another. He debates sending another touristy shot, or one of him climbing a cliff face, but instead he snaps a quick selfie with his head against the pillow, puts a black and white filter on, and sends it before he can change his mind. Once it’s delivered, he buries his face into the pillow and waits for whatever’s to come.

Instead of a text reply, this time he receives another picture in response. He waits for it to load, wondering what he’s about to see. It’s a picture similar to his own, Zayn’s head against a pillow. This is in color, though, the filter he used making his (beautiful, Niall tries not to think) eyes stand out even more than usual. His heart clenches, and he feels like a fool for reacting so strongly. 

But seeing the pictures that Zayn puts out to the public and seeing one taken for and sent to only him are worlds apart from each other, and it’s overwhelming after all the time spent missing him. It feels so strangely intimate. He has no idea how to reply. Nothing he could say feels safe.

“I miss you,” has already been heavily implied by both of them at this point, why else would Zayn have replied to the first picture at all; why else would they have continued the exchange? But actually saying the words feels like a step too far.

“God, you’re so hot,” is definitely a part of what’s rolling around in Niall’s head, but it feels desperate and sad, not to mention unequal to his feelings about Zayn’s ridiculously perfect face.

In the end, Niall just sends a sleepy-faced emoji and lies there wondering what happens next, hoping he’ll pass out soon and leave it for another day.

Zayn doesn’t send anything back that night, and Niall is no clearer on where they stand than he has been since Zayn left the band. Since before that, even, if he’s honest.

It’s been days since they’ve exchanged any kind of message, but Niall has just taken a selfie with an amazing sunset in the background, and he doesn’t know who else to share it with. He sends it, like the others, with no text, and receives a reply almost immediately.

_Where are you? It’s beautiful._

Niall can barely remember what country he’s in to reply. He looks around him for a second to bring himself back, but ends up deciding to go with his first thought.

  
 _N: It’s hard to keep up._ 🚌🚄✈️

_Z: At least you’re doing this your way._

_N: Yeah, guess we have that in common now._

Niall wonders if the bitterness comes across via text. Zayn’s perceptive, he’s pretty sure he can figure it out.

No reply comes for a long while, and Niall wonders if he’s blown this thing apart before it even had a chance to take off. Or if it had ever been anything to begin with.

***

It’s been a week, and nothing from Zayn. Niall’s not going to make the first move, so he figures things are back to what had previously become their normal. He tells himself that he’s forgotten about it, but he finds himself setting a notification for Zayn that doesn’t sound like any other sound his phone makes, just in case. When it finally goes off, he’s preparing to get on a plane back to London, and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

_Going to the Brits?_

The question throws him off; it’s almost as if Zayn can see him preparing to board the plane. Hell, maybe he can. Niall hadn’t noticed any cameras about, but they were so easy to hide nowadays.

_No, going to London for some reason I haven’t figured out. Harry and me aren’t going to the show._

Zayn’s the only person in the world outside of the band who understands the madness they go through enough to only reply:

_Oh, me either. We could stay in and watch together._

Niall nearly swallows his tongue when he reads the message. It’s playful in a way that they haven’t been with each other since everything happened, yet suggestive enough to leave Niall not knowing what to say. He hopes Zayn will say something more before he has to. 

When nothing further comes, he decides to go with a fairly safe response. 

_Aren’t you in LA now, Mister Hollywood?_

He hopes he struck the same note of playfulness that Zayn had with his text.

_Yeah, why not fly over, Mister World Traveler?_

Fuck, what a tempting offer. He sees no point in going to London, except to get peoples’ hopes up for something that’s apparently not allowed to happen. And wouldn’t it be such a perfect ‘fuck you’ to all the ridiculous bullshit management puts them through? He almost wants to test what exactly might happen if he defies the orders he’s been given. He tells himself that’s the main reason his blood is rushing, the thought of defiance rather than the thought of being near Zayn.

_Can’t. Orders from on high, must comply or else._

Zayn knows all too well, that being one of the many reasons that he’d walked away from everything, including Niall. He hopes that Zayn’s new contract is less like a prison sentence.

_Z: That’s shit. We could always text during, talk shit._

_N: That we can._

After a beat with no more texts exchanged, Niall decides to be a bit bold.

_You have any plans to come out this way again any time soon?_

He waits, nervous, already somewhat regretting having sent the text, wondering how it had gotten to the point where he was so afraid to reach out to Zayn.

_Doing a lot of album promo here, not sure what my schedule is over there. Are you planning to hang around for awhile, then?_

‘I would hang around awhile for you,’ Niall thinks, but doesn’t dare say.

_N: Not sure what the plan is for me after just flying out._

_Z: We’ll have to see if our schedules ever match up. It’s been nice talking again. I’ve missed you._

Well, the words have finally been said, and Niall can hardly believe that it was Zayn to say them. Not that he doesn’t think Zayn cares, but he was the one to walk away. His choice. It’s taken this long for Niall, even as easygoing as he is, to feel mostly okay about it.

_I’ve missed you the whole time._

Niall almost feels like he’s revealing too much by saying it, but hadn’t he really said it as soon as he’d started sending the pictures?

Zayn doesn’t reply for what feels like forever, and Niall tries to distract himself by playing around with various apps. It works well enough that he jumps with shock when Zayn’s alert goes off again.

_You know leaving you was one of the worst parts?_

Niall is stunned, completely caught off guard by the words. Louis was Zayn’s best friend; Zayn and Liam always had a bit of a weird thing going on, and Harry’s Harry. He knew that Zayn had loved him, as he’d loved the other boys, but for him to say that is overwhelming. Nothing that’s coming to his mind feels like the right thing to say, so he just sits, sort of frozen, wondering if Zayn will have anything more to say. Finally, his phone goes off again.

_I mean, it was all hard, but most everyone else got angry. I could deal with having people angry with me, but I couldn’t deal with feeling like I’d hurt you. Like I’d left you behind._

Niall doesn’t send back, ‘well, you had,’ but it’s a near thing for half a moment. But he’s glad that Zayn is being honest, and he doesn’t want to give him a reason to shut down. So he goes with honesty, since that seems to be where they are right now.

_It hurt like hell, Z. I was too sad to be mad. I could tell you weren’t happy, we all could. But I thought it was something we could work through. We all had times we wanted out. We never walked away from each other._

Niall feels wrung out from typing the response; it seems now that he’s being honest, he’s having a hard time shutting it off. He’s kept all this in, or at least from the person he needed to say it to, for the better part of a year. It’s nice, if painful, to let it out to the person who needed to know how Niall felt.

_I know, I know. I did it all wrong. I’m still so sorry I did that to you. To all of you, my boys._

Niall can’t help it if tears have started falling without his consent. It’s a lot, what they’re laying out between them. He tries to wipe them away before anyone notices.

_N: We still are, you know. Your boys. Even though you’ve been a bit shit to us in the press._

_Z: I know...they always have to press me until I end up saying something they can twist into the narrative they want to sell._

Niall doesn’t know what to say to that, not wanting to break the fragility of the moment with anything too harsh. He does understand, as much as he hates it, and he’s having a harder time holding it against him now that they’ve reconnected like this.

_N: No hard feelings...I just hope you’re happier now._

Zayn answers back faster than Niall was ready for.

_I am happier. Doesn’t mean I don’t have regrets. Hope we really can hang out again someday._

Niall couldn’t have hoped that would ever be a possibility, before he’d sent that picture and started all of this. So much had changed so quickly; he should be used to that being a fact of life, but this has thrown him for a loop.

_I really hope so too, Z. My phone’s dying, been fucking about with it too much. Talk soon._


End file.
